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Gamers and Schizoids Make the Same Mistakes

The Italian psychologists made a research and found out that the people addicted to the computer games are unable to analyze their mistakes. The specialists had tested the group of 20 gamers and compared the results with the ones of the average people with different hobbies. The tasks were the same. The analysis of these people’s answers showed that though the both groups had the same intellectual level, the fans of the computer games continue repeated making the previous mistakes.

To study the peculiarities of the gamers the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) which is used for diagnosing the patients with the schizophrenia. The ones being tested ave to choose the cards which match each other according to the size, colour or shape. The difficulty is the fact that there is not always clear what criteria will be appropriate. The healthy people with no mental disorders tried another variant when they understood that the criteria they chose were wrong. They were able to complete the task with no any significant effort as they could remember their erroneous variants. The mentally disordered people keep choosing the cards by chance, making no analysis of the previous tries which appeared to be mistakes. Though the gamers taking part in the experiment had the normal abilities and were quite healthy their results didn’t differ a lot from the results of the patients with abnormal states.

The gamers have the pathological alternations of the mind sphere which prevent them for remembering the information received earlier. In the moment when we learn something the fragile “bridges” are being built between the brain cells. That is a mark for the data received which is called the temporal connections in the psychology. To be able to produce these binds the brain should be in a proper condition. The gaming addicts have the altered chemical reactions in their brain that’s why to remember the new information by producing the temporal binds is hard for them. They make greater effort to memorize the mistake they made and keep repeating it in the further tasks.

To understand why that happened the specialists studied the habits of the gaming addicts. The reasons for that phenomenon is the existence of the “save” key. In a game you may start with the certain time and place, but there isn’t such option in a real life. And of course one can’t reboot and start the life one more time.

Cool. I never would have thought that the existence of one function–that being the save function– would make such a difference. I would have guessed it would have been something else that made them unable to identify mistakes.

This was a really interesting post to read. I’m somewhere in between a casual and hardcore gamer. My husband is definitely an every day gamer. We both read this and thought on it quite a bit. Nice job. Congrats on being freshly pressed.

Where did you find this information at? That doesn’t seem very logical at all. I myself have been diagnosed with Schizo Effective disorder. That means I am both schizophrenic and bipolar. Even before I was diagnosed and suffered greatly, when I made a mistake I learned form it and did not repeat the process. I have the ability to learn from my mistakes and correct them. The doctor I am currently with occasionally has me do cognitive medical studies. The doctors always tell me that they are amazed at how well I perform and can often not keep up with the results of my answers, many of the tests are timed and you must give responses about a subject. I even have times where I have listed more than what they needed before the time is up and they just tell me to stop. The information stated above, imo seems flawed.

Great article : we have 5 kids and two of them are addicted to gaming and/or the internet . Needleness to say I recognise a lot : those two do not show any success stories ….. this article shows why , but I am daddy and what he is saying is never true ….

I kind of disagree with this article. There are just as easily people who aren’t gamers who continually make mistakes as there are gamers who do. If I’m called into work and told that I’ve done something wrong or that I need to do something better, obviously I’m going to take that person’s advice and react accordingly. And I’m an avid gamer. Yet, I see people, regular people older and younger with no prior gaming experience, continue to do the same things regardless of what they’re told.

And how can the save key alter someone’s brain chemistry? Sure, we save our games, but there are varying situations in games that make us aware that we need to approach things differently or that if mistakes are made we need to correct them. Like if we’re fighting a boss and an element is constantly being negated, obviously we need to regroup and try another element until one succeeds. A save key is not a viable excuse, in my opinion.

I am dubious about the results of this experiment. I am a serious gamer. I found that my problem solving skills, my memory retention and navigational skills have all been increased dramaticaly. Since these are the skills I use when gaming. I had started gaming at the age of 28 though and am now, 42. The effects on young gamers may be different. I would say that they become lazy, easily board with anything else. Unhealthy. I workout every second day, a habit, I had since I was sixteen. I think demographics are important in such experiments. Who knows.

Anybody who studied how scientific research is prepared and performed will immediately begin to ask themselves many questions about this article, not the biggest of which is: how a gamer (not to mention “addicted gamer”) is defined. Here it seems the author assumes that gaming is a homogenous activity, that all, or even majority, of games and gamers are essentialy the same in regard to mental activities performed (and that all games have a save option!). That is basically not true. as proven by Darrelx above. It may be the case that either the scientists based their research on faulty preconceptions, or that the author of the article put their results in distorted, much too general terms. Either way, looking at the comments, people should be more critical and suspicious of generalisations like this, even if they are backed by the magical word “scientific”.